Unlocking cancer vaccine potential: What are the key factors?

Infinitopes Ltd, a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company developing cancer vaccines, today announced the online publication of a peer-reviewed article in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics (HVI). This publication outlines the current cancer vaccine landscape and the challenges facing vaccine technologies in the treatment of solid tumours.

The review, entitled “Unlocking Cancer Vaccine Potential: What are the Key Factors?”, was an invited contribution from the editorial team at HVI for inclusion in their up-coming special edition on cancer vaccines. The Company has co-authored this review in close collaboration with senior academics from the University of Oxford's cancer vaccine programme. The article describes the history of cancer vaccine development, the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on vaccine immunology, and the hurdles that face the successful clinical development of vaccines within the solid tumour space. 

Lead author Dr Michael Grant, Executive Medical Director of Infinitopes, commented:

‍“The global burden of cancer is increasing, whilst advances in diagnosis and shifts in lifestyle factors are changing the demographics of patients that we see in clinic. There is a growing need for cost-effective treatments that can be deployed in the earlier stages of disease. Cancer vaccines offer a potential solution to this and, in the past few years alone, we have begun to see some exciting results from different vaccine platforms. However, it is vital that we learn from previous failures – as well as recent successes – to optimise the clinical development of future cancer vaccines.”

Professor Mark Middleton, Head of the Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford and Scientific Advisory Board member for Infinitopes, added:

‍"As we detect cancers earlier we need treatments that are cheaper and better tolerated than existing drugs, and cancer vaccines look very promising.  Recent trial results show that they work and they are relatively cheap to make at scale.  The challenge now is to understand the rules that govern vaccine activity, so we can give them to the right patients at the right time."

“Unlocking Cancer Vaccine Potential: What are the Key Factors?” is available to read online at X, and will be published in the print edition of HVI on X.